How is the idea of a non-person deity consistent with the historical use of the term God?

Doesn't it seem to radically redefine what one means by God to refer to a being that is not a person? What kind of definition is Spinoza using (to decipher if his Substance is meaningfully identifiable as God or a god)?

I am a free agent Bob, so I have freedom of indifference and freedom of excellence.

You would be a free agent in the sense of freedom for excellence if you cultivated the virtues, you have sufficient knowledge of what is good, and your environment is conducive to your flourishing as a human.

Are you saying that God does not have freedom of indifference and therefore cannot sin?

Freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence are incompatible theories. The former holds that freedom fundamentally consists in being able to choose from contraries; whereas the latter holds that freedom fundamentally consists in having a state of being that is conducive to flourishing.

If one accepts freedom for excellence, then God is and is the only possibly perfectly free being because He is has perfect knowledge of what is good, is unimpeded by anything external to Him, and has the power to actualize what He wills; whereas if one accepts freedom of indifference, then God is and is the only possibly perfectly unfree being because He cannot will what is bad (or, depending on the view, He may not be able to do otherwise whatsoever).

My model is simpler since it requires only one substance.

Yes, but the goal is to explain the relevant data without multiplying entities without necessity; not come up with the simplest answer.

Is your God unconscious?

A conscious being, as I understand it, has a qualitative experience—qualia--such that there is something to be them experiencing the world. In a literal sense, this would require a being with complexity: with parts to facilitate a mediated interpretation of reality.

If God is conscious, it would be in a far weirder and incomprehensible way of knowing things immanently with no mediation. God, then, would not be conscious like we are: we are conscious because our brains facilitate the mediation of sense-data and our understanding of the world around us. There is something it is like to be us experiencing because we have mediated knowledge: we have faculties that cognize what is in reality. God, on the other hand, just knows reality and is intimately interrelated with it.

How? I even have certain knowledge

Because His experience of His experience is an experience. So if He has to experience His experiences, then He would also have to experience His experience of His experience and so on.

Novalis' "god-intoxicated man" is an acosmist (as I've pointed out ↪180 Proof), not "an atheist".

So, for Spinoza, God is all that exists and God is not a person? Is that the idea?

Sure, this is the portion of the argument that addresses omnipotence:

E: Proof of God as Pure Act and Divine Simplicity
1. An purely actual and absolutely simple being exists (see previous arguments).
2. Two absolutely simple beings cannot coexist because they would be ontologically
indistinguishable from each other.
3. Only one purely actual being can exist.
4. There must be at least one purely actual being because change (or composition or
essences/essen or contingency/necessity) is real.
5. There exists one, and only one, purely actual being and it is the first cause of all change.
6. This being is uniquely, absolutely simple since no other absolutely simple being can exist
and it is changeless: this is called Divine Simplicity.
7. Goodness, as a property, refers to the equality of a thing’s essence and existence.
8. This purely actual being must have an essence that is absolutely identical to its existence
because it has no parts (being that it is absolutely simple).
9. This being must be perfectly good thing (and it is the only perfectly good being because no
other absolutely simple being can exist and absolute simplicity is required for an essence
and existence to perfectly overlap).
10. To be actual only because something else actualized the potential for it to exist implies that
that thing exists contingently upon what actualized it.
11. To be actual only because something else actualized the potential for it to exist, therefore,
implies that a being which can change lacks the ability to exist in-itself (or of its own
accord).
12. All things subject to change, which are all beings with parts, are, then, contingent beings
that lack the ability to exist in-themselves.
13. A being, then, that is not subject to change exists in-itself (as pure act).
14. This purely actual being is uniquely a being that is changeless.
15. Therefore, this purely actual being is uniquely a being that subsistently exists.
16. A being that has being in and of itself is just Being itself.
17. Therefore, this purely actual and Divinely Simple being is identical to Being itself.
18. Pure act and being, then, are convertible.
19. Being in-itself is to be a necessary being.
20. Therefore, this being is necessary and uniquely necessary.

21. Power is the ability to actualize potentials.
22. Omnipotence is just the ability to have power in-itself and not derivatively from another.
23. This purely actual being, then, is uniquely omnipotent because it is the sole, true source of
actuality. It is unlimited by act outside of itself.
24. Omnipresence is just to be present in all things.
25. This purely actual being is Being itself and of which all other things get their actuality
derivatively from as its first cause of act; so this purely actual being is omnipresent.
26. This purely actual being cannot be affected by anything else and to be in space, time, or
subjected to natural laws is to be affected by them; therefore, this purely actual being is
outside of time, non-corporeal, and outside of natural laws.
27. Since this purely is not only outside of time but also incapable of any change whatsoever, it
must be eternal proper (as opposed to something like aeviternal).
28. Since this purely actual being is uniquely the only one that can exist and its nature entails
uniquely that its essence and existence are identical (making it partless); it follows that all
other caused things (by this being)—the totality of its creation—is comprised of parts
because every contingent being—every being which is caused by this necessary being—is at
least comprised of two parts: being and essence. No other essence entails its existence, so
not other essence and being can be identical and, so, no other being can be composed of no
parts.
29. Space, time, and natural laws, if they are real, are made of parts; for, at a minimum, their
essences do not entail their existences (that is, there very existence is comprised of essence
and being—thusly two parts at a minimum).
30. Therefore, space, time, and natural laws are contingent on their parts to exist.
31. Therefore, space, time, and natural laws—as contingent beings—have the potential to
continue to exist and had the potential to begin to exist (at some point).
32. This purely actual being would have to be the first cause of act for the beginning of space,
time, and natural laws and their continued existence; as both an actualized potential to
continue and begin to exist are change and this purely actual being is the first cause of
change. This is true for all other beings with parts, which is the totality of real things besides
this purely actual being.
33. All contingent beings are comprised of essence and being.
34. This purely actual being, being the first cause of the existence of contingent beings, must, in
order to cause them, apprehend the essences of those beings in order to infuse them with
being in a pure act.
35. Apprehension of essences is what it means to be an intelligence (intellect).
36. Therefore, this purely actual being must be an intelligence.
37. However, this purely actual being is absolutely simple; so its pure act of thought (intellect)
is identical to Being itself and pure act.

38. An intellect entails a will.
39. Therefore, this purely actual being must be a will.
40. However, this purely actual being is absolutely simple; so its pure act of thought, Being, act,
and will must be identical.
41. Omniscience is just to know the essences of all things that are real and could be real.
42. This purely actual being, as the first cause of anything that possibly could exist and with
knowledge of the essence of anything that possibly could exist, must be omniscient.
43. Love is to will the good of another for its own sake.
44. This purely actual being wills the existence of a thing in correspondence with its essence,
which is to will the good of that thing insofar as to will its existence.
45. Therefore, this purely actual being is all-loving (although not equally or necessarily
supremely loving).
46. A being that is all-good (perfect), divinely simple, purely actual, changeless, properly
eternal, non-corporeal, active cause of all things, the only necessary being, omnipresent,
omnipotent, omniscient, a will, an intelligence, and all-loving is what is called God.
47. Therefore, God exists.

(Strong Natural Theism, 1:E)

What do you mean by this

By analogical predication, I mean when one predicates a property of a thing by way of an analogy that is in no way meant to be taken as one and the same (viz., univocally) or completely different (viz., equivocally):

First, the predication can be univocal, meaning that the words are used in exactly the same manner. In our previous example, this would mean that God is good in exactly the same way that ice cream is good. A second form of predication is equivocal, meaning that although the words used to describe the two things are the same, they have completely unrelated meanings. To return again to our example, this would mean that when we call God good we are not using the word good to mean anything like the same thing as when we say ice cream is good.

The third form of predication is titled analogical. Here God is not good in exactly the same way that ice cream is good, but there is some kind of analogy between the way God is related to the word good and ice cream is related to the same word. That is to say, the meanings are not completely opposed or unrelated, but neither should we conclude that God’s goodness is just like the goodness of ice cream.

-- (https://amymantravadi.com/2020/03/26/the-analogy-of-being-in-the-works-of-thomas-aquinas/)

, and why do you hold that we are (or should be) speaking analogically and not univocally when we say such things?

I think it is important when specifically speaking of God to use analogical predication; because God's nature is not known to us as He is in Himself but, rather, is known to us by way of analogy to His effects. He is known from what He is not that He produces and not what He is.

God’s true nature is not apparent to us, as it is in-itself, exactly because He is never afforded to our senses (nor could He be) and is always the necessary precondition, as Being itself, for all things sensed.

Aquinas' idea here is that God will give moral instruction via divine revelation even in some cases where the moral instruction could be known without the divine revelation.

I think it is reasonable to conclude that many people may not, in practicality, reach knowledge through philosophy of God; so Divine Revelation may be fitting. I will say that I don’t think the arguments I give are highly technical nor something that a laymen is not smart enough to comprehend: I am making ordinary arguments from ordinary things in the natural world (e.g., change, contingency/necessity, etc.). However, this is not incompatible with the ‘strong natural theism’ I expounded: the central thesis merely claims that we can know through reason applied to the natural world around us about God’s nature—it could be equally true that God could expedite the process by just telling us.

I will say that knowing God through reason applied to the ordinary world is stronger and richer than if God were to reveal it to us; because epistemically it would be much less certain with Divine Revelation and it comes with many other disadvantages (such as requiring faith, tradition, etc.) unless we are talking about God supernaturally infusing us with immanent knowledge.

Sure, and that's a pretty common Christian response. But if someone is focused on individual guilt, then Original Sin will not satisfy them. Someone focused on individual guilt would insist that only one who has personally sinned is able to die

I don’t see why someone cannot hold an individual guilt theory and hold that Original Sin is the causal consequence of the first fall. If my parents are given 10,000,000 dollars and they waste it and I consequently get no inheritance, I don’t think that infringes or impedes on guilt being individualistic: I wasn’t owed that money. However, perhaps someone could rejoin that God, being perfectly good, would intervene and fix that causal chain for me so that I get what He intended for me (instead of letting me exist in the fallen world); but I think this requires that God is doing something wrong by allowing the evil to continue and this requires a demonstration of how God could intervene in a morally permissible way: I simply don’t see how He could.

Likewise, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think Orthodox and Catholic Christians believe that Aboriginal Sin is something one is guilty of: they believe that it is something one is not culpable for but still causally affects them.

As a Constitutional matter, the adjudication of States who required their citizens to comply with the taxation and practices of a particular religion were overturned through the use of the 14nth 

:up:

So, you like that all these materials are discussed in a single thread?

Well, it’s one view: mine. I want people to discuss the ‘strong natural theism’ I came up with. Naturally, worldviews contain many underlying materials to discuss.

An objection to Trinity: God/mind to me is defined as an irreducible substance with the ability to experience, freely decide, and create

The Trinity argument I gave presupposes a classical theistic sense of God, which most notably does not experience: God is not conscious in the same sense we are. He does not have subjective experience. Consequently:

Such a God experiences His Knowledge

He knows Himself: He does not ‘experience’ Himself.

Also, this idea of Him knowing/experiencing His knowledge/experience leads to an infinite regression.

He can create the universe as well. Therefore, the tree substance/Trinity is unnecessary

Nothing about what you said demonstrated that the Trinity is unnecessary. In fact, the OP’s argument for the Trinity claims that God’s self-knowledge is what causes the Trinity.

Which version of the Bible are you claiming inerrancy? In modern biblical studies, many different versions are often compared with each other.

I was speaking generically like a stereotypical Christian would about it. I would say stereotypical Christianity sees all legitimate copies of the Bible to be inerrant.

In any case, it may come down to whether one understands the Bible as being written in the language of man to understand the divine or as a divinely perfect language where every detail is meaningful.

Not really. This isn’t a dispute about God ‘dumming things down’: it’s about how God is said to do things in the OT that are incongruent with His nature (e.g., the Great Flood, laws about slavery, the conquest of Canaan, etc.).

When God ‘inspires’ rules in Exodus about keeping gentiles as property, that’s not a question about Him ‘dumming ethics down’.

Got it: thank you for the elaboration. So Spinoza is an atheist IMHO: I remember now. God refers to a Divine Person historically: this Substance is not a person. He would be right to classify it not as God, like Schopenhauer does with his universal will.

The point on divine freedom: freedom of indifference versus freedom of excellence, is an important one.

Yes, @MoK appears to be overlooking this distinction I have made and collapsing the discussion into ‘free will’.

On the demonstration of the Trinity, one issue I thought of is that the distinction between God's will and God's intellect is generally considered to be merely conceptual. It is a distinction that appears for us, but it isn't a real distinction (else God would not be simple). It's the same way "good" and "true" apply to being generally, but don't add anything to being; they are being as considered from some perspective. But then it would seem that the distinction would have to be real if it is generating subsistent relations, no?

Keen point. My response would be that you are absolutely right that His thinking and willing are the same; so when He wills the good of Himself it is identical to thinking of Himself as good. However, I would say that, as noted in my makeshift document in the OP, there are two and only two objects of God’s thought about Himself: His self-unity and Himself as that unified faculty. His faculties collapse ontologically into each other; and so it is one and the same faculty which God is; but this oneness, for God to know Himself perfectly, is distinct from knowledge of Himself in terms of that faculty. This thusly produces two objects of His thought, one the Holy Spirit and the other the Son.

The proofs of God are of course well-known by now, and not convincing at all IMO

Why are they unconvincing to you?

Then the proof of the trinity...it always makes me a bit sad to read these, because it's always obviously arbitrary post-hoc rationalizing

That’s a completely unjustified ad hominem and straw man. These arguments convinced me of Trinitarianism: I was not a Trinitarian before coming up with them.

I have no idea what self-subsistent being would be like. I also cannot see how anything in our investigations of nature could inform us about what self-existent being is like or that it gives us any reason to believe in self-existent being

That’s what the four proofs of God’s existence are setting after: reasons for believing in self-subsisting being and what it would be like (analogically).

You say we can know through natural theology that God is omnipotent, but you don't explain how natural theology enables us to know that

It’s in the link I shared in the OP. Did you read it?

Is natural theology different than revelation for you?

Yes. The field of study denoted as ‘natural theology’ is distinct from ‘revealed theology’: it is what we can know about God through reason applied to the natural world around us (devoid of divine revelation).

The difficulty here is that "salvation" is often understood as a Christian term, and in that context it is not something we can achieve on our own power.

Under this view, we cannot achieve repayment of our sins on our own; but God has to freely choose to save us by sacrificing Himself. Salvation here is referring to the restoration of the sinner into the proper order of creation.

I think the most fruitful things to pursue would be those things where you disagree with traditional Christians, in particular over whether some doctrine is accessible through natural reason (i.e. apart from revelation).

Sounds good. Here’s some differences and you can choose what you want us to discuss.

Stereotypical Christianity vs. “Bobism”

1. One must accept Christ in order to be saved; whereas one must sufficiently act in accord with God to be saved.

2. Justice is retributive; whereas justice is restorative.

3. The Great Sacrifice is freely chosen in a way where it could have been otherwise; The Great Sacrifice is a necessity of God’s freedom.

3. The Trinity, the good life, the path to salvation, etc. is revealed; all of those are naturally determinable.

4. Humans are the most loved by God; Persons of pure form are the most loved by God.

5. Unrepentant sinners go to eternal hell (viz., the lake of fire where there will be gnashing of teeth and great weeping); unrepentant sinners go to an indefinite hell that punishes them appropriately to get them to realize that their sins are bad until they repent.

6. The animal kingdom largely is ordered towards what is perfectly good (e.g., the lion eating the zebra is not bad); the animal kingdom is largely polluted with evil due to the Great Fall.

7. Humans caused the Great Fall; a person which existed prior to most if not all of evolution caused the Great Fall.

8. God can and has committed (retributively) just punishments without giving mercy; whereas God has to synthesize (Restorative) Justice and Mercy.

Etc.

 if we have a non-Deistic God who interacts with creation, then it is very intuitive to move into the idea that God has spoken and men have listened (i.e. faith)

Yes, but it isn’t necessary in order to understand everything that is vital to living a good life is my point. God does have to intervene in my view (such as to save us), but I am not sure exactly how often He would intervene. It seems to me that God doesn’t intervene much…

Anyway, I hope to have a closer look at your document in the near future.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

A quantum vacuum is not absolutely simple. A 'part' in this essay is being defined as 'something which contributes but is not identical to the whole'.

Is this a premise?

It is a part of my thesis.

Your OP seems focused on morality. Are you defining God as nothing more than the foundation of objective moral values? That may be all you need, and it lightens your burden of proof.

I think providing an accurate depiction of goodness and, by proxy, morality is vital to any metaphysical theory; however, I don’t think my OP is limited to that: it also provides a basis for ordinary things like change, contingency, composition, intelligibility, etc.

I noted mostly benefits that tie to our moral intuitions in the OP because I think those make the theory most advantageous.

I think that would pollute the forum with way to many posts.

My thought is that this is an attempt to justify Christianity upon rationality alone without reliance upon revelation, perhaps because you believe rationality is a firmer basis for belief than revelation or faith alone. Your views on the Trinity, incarnation and sacrifice, grace, mercy, and justice, and the distinctions between heaven, hell, and purgatory are clearly Christian. Suggesting that we could arrive at those ideas without introduction to and indoctrination to Christianity, but that we could arrive at that through reason alone will not ring true to anyone but a very devout Christian.

Exactly what I did is demonstrate that we can, and I in fact have, determined various aspects of God’s nature and His creation without appeal nor indoctrination into any major world religion because they all depend on Divine Revelation. Even if all the scriptures for all religions were found to be utterly false; my arguments would remain unimpeded.

You do move away from Christian orthodoxy in some places, like hell not being eternal, with the possibility of posthumous salvation, purgatory taking on a more traditional hell-like state

This is because I am not ad hoc rationalizing Christianity. I am not a Christian. I am going where reason applied to mundane things takes me (such as the nature of change, contingency, composition, etc.).

 you seem to redefine original sin, you describe a purely rational state when we go to heaven  (which seems consistent with your desire to prioritize rationality as an attribute)

Rationality is not distinct from faith: that would imply that to have faith is always irrational. I have faith that germs make me sick because doctor’s told me so and I trust the curriculum I had in school. I did not verify faithlessly that germs make me sick.

I do, however, to your point, prioritize faithless over faith-based understanding because faith requires trust in someone else to provide verification that one does not do themselves. So, of course, verifying something myself without the need for trust in anyone else is going to be more convincing for me than otherwise.

The reason that perfect knowledge is a part of our heavenly state is because reason is our highest faculty, because it (1) resembles God most and (2) it guides our actions, and its natural end is to know everything absolutely. That’s the whole point of intellect.

If I had to offer a single assessment, it would be that you're trying to sort out your very Christian beliefs and orientation in a way that comports with your philosophical leanings. It presents an account of your religious journey, which I think would be well received by a pastor with philosophical leanings and who isn't overly orthodox in his views, but less so to a conservative minded priest.

I genuinely am not trying to sort out Christian beliefs in the paper: I am just following the logic to where it takes me unbiasedly. If that takes me to conclusions a Christian might accept, then so be it.

I don't find it all persuasive in terms of convincing me that your views might arise without an a priori commitment to Christianity. The person who might find this interesting is a Christian who is troubled with some of the consequences of Christianity,

I understand where you are coming from; but I would challenge you to find fault with the writings themselves that I posted, because I didn’t depend on Christianity for my arguments. I began with natural theological arguments for God’s existence from change, contingency, composition, and essences.

f god is being itself, and there is no real separation (as opposed to conceptual distinction) between being and beings then there is no separation between god and nature.

God is subsistent being itself; which means that He exists before and independently of anything which depends on Him. Therefore, there is a separation between Being and beings; although beings would be dependent and thusly intimately related to Being itself.

This really gets into a much richer and far mysterious topic of what being is. The more I’ve thought about what being itself is, the more complicated it gets. I would ask you: what do you think self-subsistent being would be like? This is distinct from something which just happens to exist (viz., a contingent being like a chair).

Also since nature is not gendered, not a person at all, why refer to god as "He'.

Good question. It is metaphorical for God giving life to everything else, like a male gives life and a female makes life. There’s nothing particularly wrong with describing God as He, She, They, or just God: the only one that wouldn’t make any sense is ‘it’ because God is a person.

Doing this and the idea of an intervening god seem to place you more in the context of scriptural theology than natural theology

By ‘strong natural theism’, I was noting a position that is confined to the knowledge have of God naturalistically that is ‘strong’ because it takes the position that we can sufficiently know God this way; however, it is not incompatible with revealed theism either. It is not a dilemma.

We can know, through natural theology, that God could intervene if He wanted to because He is omnipotent and unaffected by anything external to Him; however, I do believe He also has to choose what is best, so if what is best is to not intervene at all then in effect He cannot intervene.

Whether or not the idea of separation of church and state was primarily motivated by deism is a completely separate topic. However, it is clear that not all the founding fathers were deists or atheists; and they did not establish a separation of church and state. The first amendment refers to congress, which is federal---not state--and state's had sanctioned churches for a long time afterwards. It is an interesting topic, though: Thomas Jefferson seemed adamantly in favor of a full separation like the one you noted.

I've read his Ethics and it seems to me like he believed in a form of deism; but, crucially, I don't see how it is incompatible with historical classical theism (like Aristotle's). Can you elaborate on what you mean by classical theism being outdated but Spinoza's Substance is not?

Can you elaborate on Spinoza's critiques of classical theism?

I think God is Being itself; so perhaps Spinoza's "Substance" is another way of describing it: what do you think?

Not really, to be honest. I see God as being perfectly capable of intervening if He wants to. Can you elaborate?

@Jamal removed it but I worked it out with them so that this time they hopefully won't.

How can you be anti something that doesn't exist?

Atheism is the belief that there are no gods. It isn’t anti-theism in the sense you are referring: it is the thesis that theism is wrong.

Likewise, religion is the worshiping of a divine deity. There are religious atheists; and there are areligious theists. I just point this out to show you how your view is parasitic on people who have tried to convert you or keep you in mainstream Christianity. This is what I really meant by what you quoted of me: your view is narrowed parasitically on one extreme view within one worldview and I am just trying to broaden the landscape for you to think about for yourself.

I'm assuming that you have a history of debate with this person?

Yes, although I love @frank to death :kiss: , they straw man Christianity all the time and refuse to engage with peoples’ responses that provide the iron manned versions.

As for the people who have not only questioned my ability to tackle big subjects, but also suggested that the reason for my philosophical endeavors is a substitute for trauma therapy, that gave me a wry chuckle.

Well, that’s an ad hominem attack and I am sorry they do that to you. I have no doubt that you are capable of reaching substantive positions on things.

I guess I'll gear up for word wars, brought to me by people who have no clue who I am or what I stand for.

See, that’s the thing though: these kinds of discussions don’t need to be ‘word wars’. It doesn’t need to be a formal debate where we try to convince the audience or where we be as uncharitable as possible to each other’s positions. Instead, this is a place for genuine, intellectual conversations geared towards knowing the truth.

Do other people see what I'm seeing?

Politically, I doubt we agree on anything; but that’s the whole point: we can discuss and learn from each other. Emerson once wisely said: ~”In some way every man is my superior, and in that I can learn from him”.

That was my reason for sharing this post - our world has been corrupted by religion, conditioning us to be led by a poor substitute for a powerful being.

Forgive me, I am not trying to put words in your mouth; but from my perspective it seems like you may have a really negative view of religion because of your horrible exposure to the really bad parts. For example, I think religion total net has done great things for humanity because it has shown us, however imperfectly, what is objectively good. Of course, this will lead us to presumably a disagreement in our ethical commitments; but, the way I see it, God ultimately has to be posited for there to be objective morality.

I disagree, as noted in my response before. Again, you thinking of liberty of indifference not liberty for excellence.

Bob, I gave you this definition of murder in our discussion two weeks ago

There’s no definition in your quote that you provided of yourself. What is your definition of murder? All you said is that it ‘must have a dead victim’.

My definition of murder is "a death not sanctioned by God".

Ok, this is a definition: thank you! Firstly, I want to hyper-focus on the fact that your definition here would prima facie allow for murder on earth for people who don’t completely die (e.g., have rational souls). Are you also still claiming that “a death” has to be a complete annihilation of a life? If so, then there cannot be murder of any humans on earth according to your view.

Secondly, I would like to just note how arbitrary this definition is. You just evaded the conversation by defining murder as “any case of directly intentionally killing an innocent person that does not involve God”. Why doesn’t it apply to God too?

Yes, and it's fair enough that you would press your point. Let's try to understand the logic a bit. First, your argument, which of course presupposes that murder is impermissible:

1. Murder is the direct intentional killing of an [innocent] person
2. The Angel of Death intentionally kills the innocent Amalekite infant
3. Therefore, the Angel of Death is a murderer

And then the reductio I mentioned (although I will not here present it as a reductio):

4. It is the Angel of Death's job to take life
5. It is not impermissible to do one's job
6. Therefore, the Angel of Death is not a murderer

This is the case where there is a logical standoff between two contradictory conclusions

But I don’t think you accept that reductio. I’ll run a parody argument to demonstrate my point:

4. It is the Heinrich Himmler’s job to mass execute jews.
5. It is not impermissible to one’s job.
6. Therefore, Himmler is not a murderer.

I think what you are really contending, which to me begs the question, is whether or not God has the authority to take innocent life; and this just loops back to our original point of contention.

Digging deeper, (4) and (5) have to do with the idea that death is inevitable, and that for a person to die is not inherently unjust. This opens up the can of worms of the metaphysics and ethics of death, and the adjacent can of worms is the question of God's sovereignty within which question is the matter of whether God is responsible for death (or whether God "directly intends" the fact of natural death)
…
For example, if everything that occurs is allowed by God to occur, and if this allowance counts as an intentional bringing-about, then it follows that everyone who dies is murdered

That’s an interesting point. I am going to have to think about that one and get back to you.

My prima facie response would be that the world is fallen due to sin, and that sin is what causally is responsible for our mortality. Without “evil of persons”, there would be no mortality. That seems like the only viable rejoinder.

But how is it inerrant if the author's are untrustworthy and give false information?

Maybe it is Divinely Inspired that way, but, at a minimum, that doesn't seem to cohere with God's nature. Don't you think?

How about God? Is God free?

Yes, God is absolutely free and absolutely incapable of doing otherwise in my view. This is fundamentally because freedom for excellence, as opposed to freedom of indifference, does not require the ability to have done otherwise.

You propose a God who has foreknowledge. If I know about God's foreknowledge, I can do the opposite since I am a free agent.

Well, I think this would assume that God has the same kind of foreknowledge as you in this case and that freedom consists in true agent indeterminacy—both of which I reject. When you have foreknowledge, it is temporal; God doesn’t have foreknowledge in the literal sense, because He is outside of change itself. The ‘whole’ is just immediately ‘in front’ of Him; which is different than you knowing something about what is going to happen next. Likewise, I don’t think you have the ability to have done otherwise simpliciter: I think libertarian freedom, leeway freedom, properly consists in the ability to do otherwise than what physically would have happened.

Now, you could say that if you had this ‘whole’ of all change ‘in front’ of you like God then you could go against God. Ok, but then you are God.

Now, if you have foreknowledge in the literal sense and know that God wants you to do something, X, but choose not to; well, that’s standard free will which doesn’t negate anything I said. God would know you will choose not to do X and that would be a part of His knowledge of ‘the whole’.

Welcome to the forum, Paula :smile: .

I am sorry to hear you have experienced what seems to be the worst aspects of organized religion. However, I would challenge you to aspire to learn the strongest and most plausible positions on all sides of the various topics-at-hand and reach your own informed decision. If you get too caught up in fending off the people with unsophisticated positions, on any topic (but in this case theology), then your position will be formulated parasitically on those positions which you wish to oppose and this makes your own position equally, but oppositely, malformed as your opponents.

With respect to theology, there are many sophisticated views on both sides of the theology debate which have no bearing on the ill-formed positions people on both sides can take in practical life.

As far as some of these people in this forum go, such as @frank, they will pump you will a false sense of accomplishment by feeding into straw mans and emotion-pumped critiques of ill-formulated religious views without having the integrity to contend honestly with those who provide the iron-manned versions.

 It is not a demon inhabiting a non-demonic inhabitant, but rather something which is inherently demonic

I apologize: I was not understanding you before. I thought you were referring to demonic possession. Indeed, I agree that it is much more questionable if demonic hybrids would have rights.

On the one hand, I want to say that created beings which violate the proper order of creation should be uprooted and this is not unjust to do (such as eliminating torture devices); on the other hand, persons have rights and a person is a substance of a rational nature. Consequently, (fallen and unfallen) angels would be persons with rights under this view; and since the ends do not justify the means, it follows that these demonic children would probably have rights (since they probably were substances of a rational nature).

It would be permissible, though, to isolate them if needed to stop them from their natural, evil pursuits (if that is intrinsic to being a demon-human hybrid). Stopping evil as it is being attempted is always permissible.

Could God wipe them out justly? I don’t know, but it would definitely violate the rationale I gave above for rights.

Yes, and I think it is something that our Protestant culture misses

I agree. The Bible is incredibly difficult to interpret (I’ve found).

I think the problem here is a sort of reductio. God and the Angel of Death are not generally deemed murderers, and therefore if one maintains a notion in which they are murders then an abnormal semantics is in play.

There are different approaches here. Some would say that God simply does not murder, some would say that no one is innocent before God

Yes, but no one that objects with those to me (so far) has ever coherently defined what ‘murder’ is. Like I said, that view may be internally coherent in some theory; but it isn’t coherent with the idea of rights I expounded above. Do you have a different definition of murder that you prefer such that God and the Angel of Death are not committing murder?

My definition, to recap, is that murder is the direct intentional killing of a person.

Fr. Stephen De Young must be in my YouTube algorithm now, because I stumbled upon <this short video on messiness>.

Interesting. It seems like Fr. Stephen is taking a more spiritual approach to the theology and the Bible (going back to the beginning of our conversation). His critique is fair insofar that systematizing is can go too far and systematize for the sole sake of doing so (e.g., Kant); but I wonder how valid this critique really is: he seems to just have given up on striving towards perfect knowledge. It seems like systematic knowledge is just the attempt at, or aspiration towards, complete knowledge. Should we really give that up? What do we have left after doing so?

Again, you are confusing identify relations with predication. When I say "The Son is God" I am not referring to something analogous to "S = G".

Collapse occurs at the syntactic level, not at the semantic level of possible worlds.

The semantic level is a linguistic expression of the syntactic level. My point is that if you reject the possible worlds theory, then you are rejecting S5 as well as standard modal logic.

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Bob, your definition of murder, the direct intentional killing of an innocent person applies only to you, to me, and to other people. It does not apply to God

Logically, it would apply to any circumstance where an innocent person is directly intentionally killed. God is not exempt: you would have to redefine murder to support your case. I am still waiting for a definition of murder from you.

The closest I see to one is here:

(5) When a person is dead to God. When a person ceased to exist to God.

To cease to exist to God is just for God to no longer will one’s existence, since we actively get our being from Him, and so this would be the ultimate death of ourselves as soul. Again, this is not what death means in the context of murder: we are talking about the death of a body.

What about respecting their decision as a free agent and not trying to impose upon their will by modifying it through rehabilitation, but instead giving them their just dessert? One ought be rewarded for bad behavior and good.

That eliminates mercy. God has to be both merciful and just at the same time.

Well, you believe in NT, and within it, Adam is cited.

I don’t, and this OP doesn’t suggest that. I am sympathetic to the NT though.

I am saying a perfect good God cannot create an imperfect good creatio
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No, under my definition, a perfect God can only do things right! 

Again, you are confusing God willing evil and doing evil. Persons in creation would have the free will to do evil in virtue of merely having it.

I have a challenge for such a God

I don’t understand how that challenges the view of God I exposed before.

Evil cannot be transformed into good.

Evil is a privation; privations can produce good. Missing a limb is a privation, but this privation can produce courage, kindness, a renewed enjoyment/respect of life, etc.

It seems like, then, that aspect of the scripture was not Divinely Inspired. Maybe what God revealed to Samuel originally was; but I don't see how this view is consistent with Divine Inspiration.

I don't see how my argument is pseudo-logic because it uses analogical reasoning. Can you provide any part of my argument that cannot be translated formally into classical logic?

With respect to S5, possibility collapses into necessity because they are using the possible world theory. If something is possible IFF it exists in at least one possible world and necessity is to exist in all possible worlds, then it logically follows that a possibly necessary being must exist.